


One Last Dance

by Catharticism



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant until DotO, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Low Chaos Daud (Dishonored), because like hell he'll fuck off and die when he has a birb to take care of, mostly low chaos bc fuck them overseers they killed his kids, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-19 21:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18978571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catharticism/pseuds/Catharticism
Summary: Daud kept two things and only two things from his childhood: his mother's warning, and his oricorio.





	1. Gone

**Author's Note:**

> thank u kogobean for helping me mold a crack idea into this fic and my bestie serotonin dealer for indulging me in fandoms you have no idea about  
> i also wrote this while half-asleep and listening to sad songs,, sorry  
> things probably are not one-for-one how they are in canon, also sorri

Something ought to break the silence, something other than his heavy breathing. It's heavy, settling onto his spine and shoulders like a burden he cannot shrug off, or hand off to anyone else, not like he knows anyone else convenient enough to do that for him.

Then again, it wasn't _really_ silent. Daud can hear the roaring of his blood in his ears, deafening, like the crashing of waves against the cliffshore before a typhoon.

The scene has nearly consumed all of his senses to the point where he feels as if he knows nothing more than the blood pooling on the floor, the slowly cooling body, the bloody knife in his hand, his lungs struggling for breath, the stench of fresh death in the air.

He's dead. He's dead, _he's dead_ , and Daud should be happy but he doesn't feel anything at all. Lost, probably. Confused. Just a bit scared.

No, he's terrified.

He should move. Someone will be suspicious of him, and if they see the Mark on his hand, more new and fresh than a newborn child, they wouldn't hesitate to turn him over to the Abbey. But… he just… _can't_.

_Ori?_

Daud turned his head towards the direction of the sound, and his oricorio, her dull red and black feathers blending in oddly with the rest of the room, stared back at him. She looks like how he feels except… except she hasn't made a sound ever since he shielded her from a backhanded hit the last time she tried to sing, years upon years ago.

She chirped again, and he takes a step forward. Two.

She flits along the hold, sticking to the shadowy places that no one sane goes into, not if they want to be the victim for any horrible deed, and Daud dutifully follows. His steps are empty, his head both weightless and stuffy, like someone has tried to stuff cotton into his skull. It's easy to concentrate on his bird though, easy to follow her.

It's easy to trust her too. She's the only one left alive that has never tried to hurt him; it's always easy to trust that.

She must know about his Mark; why else would she fly to places that no normal man can reach, and look back at him expectantly with full confidence? She doesn't judge, doesn't make aggressive noises at him or shy away like the Overseer arcanines and growlithes. She’s patient too, endlessly so.

It’s when he’s left the compound and put it far behind him that his head clears. Daud takes in a breath like he’s never breathed before. He smells the smokey air and river brine, all characteristic of Dunwall, and despite its decrepit stench it smells like freedom and heaven to him right now.

He has nothing except for the clothes on his back, the knife in his hand, a pocketful of spare change, the Mark on his hand, and the oricorio that now alights onto his shoulder, affectionately nudging his chin. He’s dirt poor, but not alone, and right now he feels like the richest man alive.

“Come on, Simin. Let’s see if I can buy a nice meal for the both of us.”

* * *

The first few years are just Daud and Simin. He finds odd and abandoned places, usually at or near rooftops, to stay at until he's compromised, and then moves again. Neither complain too much, and as long as he makes a soft place stuffed with pieces of cloth for Simin to rest at, something he does dutifully without failure or forgetfulness, both are rather content. It’s hardly a simple life-- there’s nothing simple about making a living as an assassin, but it’s one that Daud found himself sliding into easily.

He builds notoriety. They start to whisper his name in the dark corners of the city, where rainwater doesn't touch the ground and vermin make their home. They speak of a man that appears, disappears, and reappears out of shadows, who silently slits throats under the cover of night and is gone by morning. Thankfully, there’s no mention of his small red-and-black pokemon, and so he lets the rumors be, even lets them build. The more the better, and soon he can stop looking for jobs and start simply receiving them.

It gives him quite a heady feeling. Powerful. Lofty. Euhorn might be the emporer of the city, but soon it might be Daud who rules the underground with an iron fist, manipulating fate from within the shadows. Surely, that will entertain the Outsider, would it not? His visits grow shorter and fewer, but Daud is eager to continue his path.

However, the moment he enters his enclave, his little hiding place away from the eyes of the world that he temporarily makes his resting place, he leaves it all behind the metaphorical door. (The word “home” still settles poorly on his tongue, because the only home he knows is of the hut in the small village near Karnaca that smelled of herbs and the sea and sounded of his mother’s songs that harmonized with the oricorio’s chirps.) Simin would wait inside, preening or amusing herself with small bird toys and knick-knacks, or simple dozing off, and he’d give her a small pet across her feathers that she’d lean into.

He remembers the first time he killed a man, nothing more than a fresh fourteen-year-old in the pits. Wide-eyed and horrified, he scrubbed his hands until they were a raw pink, and was convinced that his hands were too bloody to deserve his oricorio’s touch until she practically dug herself into his hold and refused to leave. He’s bolder now, but sometimes he still wonders. She still doesn’t dance, after all, not after they left his home behind.

He makes up for his longer absences with poffins and cakes, feeding her seeds and fruits and the rare nectar when he had the money for it. Odd, how he spends more money on Simin than himself, but he questioned it only once until he noticed that twinkle of scant happiness in her eyes, and then questioned it no more.

He picks up his first Whaler, on accident. Evidently, his employer wanted to hire two assassins, and they worked well together.

Maybe a bit too well.

The next few came quickly, a bit too quickly, and now he has a dozen or so men, women, and otherwise in his employ who defer to him as their leader and he doesn’t quite _know_ what to do. It unnerves him, a lot actually, and so he finds himself increasingly slinking into his room and quietly whispering his concerns and apprehensions to Simin. The oricorio doesn’t object to this new routine and seems to preen under the extra attention.

Does she even understand what he’s talking about?

Nevertheless, as the Outsider grew silent, as he found and trained Billie, as he was betrayed time and time again and recruited seconds that would betray him still, as the Whalers grew in numbers, there was always this blessed constant in his life… this little Oricorio that never danced.

These days, as they made their new home in the flooded district, he’s constrained her to a cage. He gives regular water and food to her, of course, because it’d be inhumane to do otherwise, but things turned… different between them.

It’s almost like clockwork with her, most days. Almost like a ritual. He’d get to her, clean off her cage, replace the water and food. Every other week he’d gift her to a treat to not spoil her too much, and every day he’d spend at least a spar hour to handle her, or simply watch her in her cage, doing things any other oricorio would do. But Simin here, Simin is special, Simin is special because she is very distinctly Daud’s.

Some of the Whalers have pokemon. More often than not they were just personal pets, but some helped serve as sentries or even guards. Daud realized, from listening in to the conversations of his gang members (that is what they are, a gang, right?) that nearly none of them expected Daud to have a pokemon, much less ever care for it. Sure, he’s brought many of them out from nothing, some even when they were still young children, but it didn’t necessarily mean that Daud could ever actually express explicit compassion towards something as simple as a pokemon, right?

They were wrong. Very, very wrong, but Daud didn’t bother correcting them.

They only found out about Simin when a second of his tried to take over as leader of the Whalers by doing the _one_ thing that guaranteed his failure, and that was to try and kidnap her and use her as some sort of bargaining chip, or hostage, or whatever. That particular betrayal still makes Daud see red with rage. It’s his most emotional murder since he killed his old master.

His body was never seen again, but the bloodstain on the the rooftop of the defunct Greaves Refinery told the whole story.

“An oricorio. Never would have expected it, Daud,” Billie had said as she donned her new red coat, a coat that perfectly mirrored the one Daud wore that is currently draped on his chair. He was petting Simin, specifically stroking the feathers on her back, more to calm himself down than to calm her down, although the eventual effect proved beneficial to both.

“What about it? I am from Serkonos,” he had answered as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

The Whalers made note to never lay a single finger on the red-and-black foreign pokemon that Daud secretively keeps, maybe even actively defend it if it means they can avoid a fate like their former second-in-command. Daud appreciates the thought, at least.

* * *

_“You made a new friend, haven’t you?”_

_Daud looked up at his mother and nodded eagerly. “She’s gotten so much better!”_

_It’s a good lesson for her son, Simin thinks. It’s good for him to learn how to care for others, even if that other is currently just a small dancing bird. The unnamed oricorio liked her son well enough it seemed, despite his absolute inability to make any friends. That’s hardly his fault; no one wants to be friends with the son of a witch._

_Pokemon don’t judge those sorts of things however, or at least most aren’t taught to do so, and this baile oricorio was no different. The poultice she gave her worked wonders, and it took her no time at all to get back to flying and dancing shape._

_Daud looked in wonder as she danced along to an invisible tune, and his mother couldn’t help but smile at the adorable sight._

_Yes, the little oricorio was very good for her son indeed._

* * *

“Don’t know why you haven’t left yet.”

She’s uncaged now, free on his desk. She flits about here and there, but keeps looking back at Daud.

That look. That look. He can feel the weight of all his sins with those looks. She can see it, can see it all. The blood, the death that surrounds him like a miasma slowly choking him out, his guilt, what shame he has left.

“Damn killed the only person who can keep us together and it’s all gonna go to shit now.”

She provides no further commentary of her own, humoring him only with her silence save for that stare that pierces into his soul.

“You’ve never left. Near thirty years of my bullshit and you never complained, never got angry at me like a real proper baile oricorio, never left me. Void if I know why.” Daud took another swig from the bottle of whatever whiskey he could snatch from the Whalers’ store of prize alcohol they enjoy swiping from their richer targets. It burns down his throat with a pain he needs more of. Punishing, almost.

Where’s his real punishment?

“Go on. Go away.” He made a shooing motion with his hand, lazy as it is. It has no effect on Simin, of course.  
Simin. A name that brings both warmth and poison to the heart, chilling his chest while wrapping him in a blanket of childhood nostalgia. It’s simpler. Quieter. He’d have schoolyard bullies over backstabbers and political drama he helped start any day.

“I’ll kill you too, like I’ve killed anyone worth a life.” The words slur out before he could stop them and Void it’s horrible and dark but he can’t stop them. He’s never had a filter around Simin and he’s not about to start now.

“‘M a shitty parter, Simin. Go back. Go away. Go h…” The word he wants to say sticks to his throat, chokes him, and it’s like he’s drowning as he coughs it back in. The word brings no memories, but instead feelings that he both craves and pushes away.

He collapses on his desk, draping himself over papers he cares for no longer, and his oricorio flits back away, looking at him with… was that worry? Shitty, shitty worry. She’s a shitty pokemon for worrying about him. “Stop caring, Simin. Fly away. Don’t think you’ve forgotten that. You can’t forget how to fly. I can’t forget how to kill. Just go away.”

She hops over to the bottle and pokes her beak at it. It makes a hollow clinking sound; it’s empty save for the last remaining drops in the bottom. Nevertheless, Daud tips it back in a vain attempt to not-savor those last drops.

“Why haven’t you left, Simin? Mama left too. They all leave.”

Maybe he should leave.

That’s a great idea, actually. (No, that’s a pig-headed idea.)

It seems that Simin knows exactly what he was thinking about because it earns him a winged smack on the head.

Still thinking that leaving is a fantastic idea, Daud laid his cheek on the desk, oddly cool against his cheeks. “I just kill. Ruin. Hurt. I’ve probably hurt you so many times. Why don’t you leave, why don’t…” He’s stopped mid-sentence by a tug, several tugs really, through his short hair. He sighs and turns his sights back to his oricorio from the very interesting wall. “I’m not seventeen anymore. Stop.”

Simin’s not very good at following orders, proven by the fact that she still continued to preen his hair. Maybe it is a good thing that Daud never participated in those pokemon fighting clubs; she’d make for a shitty partner. Void, Daud would make for a shitty partner; any issues he has, it’s all on him, all his fault, and he should pay dearly for it. But ah, that’d crush his childhood dreams.

“I don’t deserve you,” he mumbles into the wood, and the self-deprecating statement earns a lost hair that Simin proudly showed off to him.

“I never deserved you.” Another lost hair.

“You’re too good for me.” Ah, now she’s pulled two at once.

His only response to the stinging pain is a pathetic grunt.

“You really should leave. Go back h… go back. Dunwall’s the shittiest place ever.”

Simin only bobs her head in assent, and goes back to dutifully preening his hair, and in the quiet ignorance of intoxication Daud allows himself to privately admit that he actually misses this soothing feeling, how it calms down his nerves and slows down his bloodflow. She pulls out knots and tangles and does her best to straighten it all back out. She rubs her beak against the itchier parts of his head and even takes the time to take out stray grime and grit stuck in his hair.

He apologizes the next morning with red nectar, more poffins, and a renewed promise to never drink again.

* * *

She accompanies him now through the jobs, and of course Daud protests but the rest of the Whalers don’t mind her quiet presence, and the increasingly familiar weight on his shoulder helps ground Daud. At least it’s not her first time braving through his transversals, and so she’s unphased as they blink through the slaughterhouse, smelly as it is. Void, Daud hates how smelly it is, and the one time Simin flew off to much of Daud’s worry (“Simin, getting a bonecharm is _not_ a good enough excuse for getting out of my line of sight.”) she stayed far away from any bloodstains, fresh and old.

Thankfully, he doesn’t plan on killing anyone today.

The Timsh job goes similarly well, and Simin even hops excitedly between both of her feet as they all watch the people celebrate on the streets. It’s almost like dancing. Almost.

“Hungry?” Daud asks her as they turn back around to the Flooded District, and she nods.

“Go on then. Kirian will make you something delicious, I’m sure.”

She flies off at that promise, and Daud doesn’t mind the sensation of what must be bewildered stares at his back as he transverses back home.

The way back is quiet, comfortably so, and he’s nearly cheerful as he reaches the edges of the Flooded District. It’s new, different, to see the fruits of justice right in front of his eyes. Why did he never try to do more of this? It brings about a better feeling in his chest than power could ever provide. He doesn’t care for the Outsider’s attention anymore, but he does like how his oricorio seemingly picked up this new habit of following him on missions…

Something is wrong.

He sees a bloodied gray coat on the floor.

Something is horribly wrong.

Passionate killing. It’s something no assassin should ever engage in. He killed his old master out of fear. He killed Billie’s predecessor out of rage. When he sees red this time, it’s a disconcerting mix of both, and he unconsciously reaches the revelation that the Whalers are _his_ , his to guide and protect, and… and it’s all gone to the Void now?

No. Not yet. Not while he’s here, not while he’s slitting throat after Overseer throat. He hardly cares for the bodies of arcanines in his wake of violence, eyes ablaze hotter than their fires.

The ones who were with him when they entered Rudshore were more than happy to get back to their old job. It doesn’t sicken Daud like death did before this but after the Empress’ death. Is this how it feels to kill for a purpose one believes strongly in?

He sees Billie. It doesn’t take much to connect the thoughts.

He sees Delilah.

He sees the dead Overseers.

He sees his army of mismatched outsiders connected by a sea of whaling masks and vengeance.

“Where is Simin, Billie?” he whispers into the wind and rain, and it’s deathly silent. Everyone holds their breath, and even that accursed witch whose name has haunted him for the last six months seems to know better than to tread on this moment. A small mercy.

“Daud--”

“ _Where. Is. She._ ”


	2. Still Gone

“Well, Billie? Break his spirit, and you can have it all.”

Simin is clenched within Billie’s hand, struggling against her hold. However, even her fiercest bites and clawing does nothing to pierce her thick leather gloves, gloves like any other Whaler would wear. The oricorio’s cries are what seems to fill the air, and Daud’s eyes constantly dart between who are possibly the two most important presences in his life... and one just crossed him.

He really should have expected this. Every second he picks are potential leaders for the Whalers if Daud is rid of. Every single one has tried to betray him. But... Billie. Billie is different, because who other Whaler can capture his full attention, can boast the strongest share of his arcane bond? There’s jokes, of course, that Daud is the Whalers’ collective father.

If that were the case, he must be a shitty one because it seems that for many of his metaphorical children, they don’t...

He sees them in trouble like they are now, and his chest fills with a violent possession that his Whalers are _his_ and how _dare_ those damned Overseers and Delilah try to take that all away. How many of them, then, feel the same for him?

None of them, he feels like. Probably none of them except for Simin.

Billie was hardly the sort to show her emotions on her sleeve, but as of now her face shows what must be her inner turbulent conflict. Her grip on Simin is slipping.

“No. No.”

She tenses her shoulders and turns around back towards Delilah. Daud doesn’t know what she looks like now, but it makes Delilah scowl at her.

“You wouldn’t dare—“

“I won’t do this, Delilah. I...” Billie looks back at Daud, and oh she is apologetic now, so much so, and it makes Daud’s stomach churn. “Daud, I crossed you and...”

She opens her hand and Simin makes a beeline for Daud. He catches her easily with his left hand, initially aimed and primed to fight against Billie too. She buries herself against Daud, and it feels like the weight of the ocean has been lifted from his chest.

He doesn’t dare look at Billie again until the witch leaves with her warning that he’ll take no heed of, thank you very much. Simin shivers in his hold. Daud takes one look at the single-edged blade his former second offered.

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” Billie whispered. More Whalers trickled in, curious and eager to see what Daud’s judgement and punishment for their turncoat would be. Many expected him to straight up kill her and be done with it.

Daud is halfway tempted to, until he remembers... frankly, _everything_.

“Leave, Billie. Never show your face to me— to us again.”

She does as ordered, and as their arcane bond dissolved he feels a part of himself dissipate right with it. His body feels heavy.

There isn’t one uninjured Whaler, and so for the next several days they stay and recuperate. The ones who got away with just a few slashes and bruises make the patrols, and he doesn’t need to take off their masks to see the dark circles under their eyes for their cautious double-shifts. No one dares to question him, not yet anyways. Kirian pulls out his better recipes to keep their spirits afloat from despair, Finn makes sure everyone heals as cleanly as possible, and Thomas is at the head of them all, helping Daud make sure that everything is operating as smoothly as possible. They clear out unusable apartments, make steadier security, and gather up the Overseer bodies. Only very few are left alive, and those are thrown into temporary makeshift jails until they can arrange a more permanent situation.

They gather for the funerals of those have passed. Bodies cleaned and wrapped in a shroud, gathered into a simple rowing boat, and pushed off from shore. A pyre burns, and it slowly eats through the initially offered fuel, the wood of the boat, the bodies. It all disappears from view, eventually, but they still look on for a long, long time.

Daud makes Thomas his second, valuing his strangely unwavering loyalty above all else, and shuts himself inside his room. He makes audiographs that read like a confession. He fills up journals, and refuses to look at the chart of connecting dots that resulted in his further ruin. It’s when Simin refuses to eat too that Daud finally starts eating regularly, even if it’s nothing more than a piece of mystery meat and a loaf of dark bread.

He spends a lot of time petting her. Running his fingers over the feathers on her body. Scritching her head. She preens his hair back, snuggles into him in the rare times he sleeps. He tries to coo at her but his voice sounds as broken as he feels, and he doesn’t try again. Simin looked disappointed when that happened, almost so.

“Sir.”

Daud raised his head from his desk, and of course the only person bold enough to disturb him is mild-mannered Thomas, whose face is hidden behind the mask.

“Take your mask off, Thomas.”

“Of course, sir.” He does as ordered (requested?) and states straight at him. It’s not quite pity that Daud sees in his eyes, but he carries the melancholy that everyone seems to carry nowadays. “With all due respect, we ought to finish what we started. We can’t let their deaths be in vain.”

He’s right.

Once they start their next phase of planning, Daud throws himself tirelessly at his work, and Thomas joins him in tandem. Simin is the only one left to keep them in check, aggressively pulling at their hair and angrily chirping when they’ve gone too long without sleep or food.

She accompanies Daud still as they break into Coldridge Prison. Lizzy Stride seemed amused at his companion before she drops unconscious into his arms.

Daud never trained her to attack humans, even forbade it, but perhaps the memory of Billie’s betrayal still struck deep because the moment she sees Lizzy’s own traitorous second she launched an air slash at his direction, cutting at his skin but more importantly throwing him off board... or perhaps that was what would’ve happened if Daud didn’t pull him back onboard. The large man had initially looked at Daud’s oricorio in derision; he now looks at it with just the right amount of fear in his eyes.

Daud... does scold her for almost killing her first man, and none of the Whalers dare enter his room when it became a screaming match between the pair.

He screams and yells his hurt and fears to Simin because who else is there to listen? He doesn’t want her to kill, he wants her talons and feather clean unlike his crimson-stained hands. She has to understand that, she has to understand that he desperately wants one portion of his life to be ultimately unconnected with his assassin life; bringing her to missions was already toeing the line between what was acceptable and what... what would.... what would break...

She screeches back, and oh that was years of pent-up hurt and frustration that Daud didn’t need human words to comprehend and understand. They both were pulled taut by the past six months, just a few tugs away from snapping. They are snapping now, actually, right?

He wanted to shout something back, both to drown out her cries and to finally give a voice and a name to everything locked up inside him when Simin barrels towards him, beak-first into the crook of his neck. She’s shivering, jerking her body like she’s hiccuping, and Daud feels a salty trail of water drip down from his eyes. Both of his hands come up to cradle her, and he collapses onto his rarely used cot.

Were those tears he’s crying?

He takes deep breaths to calm himself down but they hardly help, not with the trembling warmth against his neck and damning words stuck in his throat.

“I... I love you,” he croaks out, and it seems that Simin doesn’t mind drying his streams of tears with her feathers.

* * *

Delilah is gone, but another threat replaces her. Thomas is suspicious of how Daud meticulously places the patrols, and Daud pays him no heed. He scathingly tells his second to shut up whenever he questions him, even though none of them carry malicious intent.

Daud knows what he is doing. Simin does too. She never strays far from him now, stuck to each other’s metaphorical hip. She’s almost possessive with how close she is to him, and Daud does nothing to dissuade her.

More Whalers leave. He doesn’t stop them.

He sees the rowboat come close to Rudshore, and orders his men to get to it and row it closer. They are cautious as they bring the man inside to Daud.

Corvo Attano. Lord Protector. Unmasked, in all his mud-tracked glory. His skin is pale. He’s cold to the touch, and his eyes are unfocused when he rouses.

Daud taunts him for a bit, but he doesn’t remember what he says. He’s sure that his oricorio dampen the effect.

And then, his men and women and otherwise disappear one by one. The fainted Pokémon and placed carefully to the side, and what scouts are left report that the incapacitated Whalers are similarly left alone.

Daud isn’t ready. He’s not ready at all, but here he is, making his final words in an audiograph, awaiting his judgement and fate. This is how his marks must have felt, waiting for the end that must come to them.

Repayment, for all of his sins.

“I know your footsteps, bodyguard.”

They meet with halfhearted steel, and it’s both like they’re fighting for their life and not at all. He bade his Whalers to stay back as he transverses and pulls and strikes and jumps. Corvo in return makes his own transversals, bluer and quicker than his, and makes large gusts of wind. A black raticate, one he recognizes as a native of Serkonos, accompanies him and attempts to strike at Daud’s heels, punishing him for every misstep, every mistake.

‘ _Oricorio!_ ’

“You stay back too, Simin,” Daud growls under his breath, and Corvo, maskless and gritting his teeth under exertion and hollow hatred and grief, twists his face into some unrecognizable emotion as he makes to strike at his head with the hilt of his folding sword.

Simin is horrible at taking orders.

She screeches something fierce and it captures the attention of the raticate. It almost looks captivated by her as she dances a circle of feathers around it in the air— even Daud would marvel at the sight of he wasn’t too busy fighting off Corvo.

Man against man. Pokemon against pokemon. An acceptable enough compromise in Simin’s circumstance, Daud grudgingly accepts.

Dark slashes like the night and crunching teeth mirror Corvo’s slashes and strikes, and slashes of pure air and fiery dances follow in step with Daud’s retaliations. It’s a stalemate, a deadly dance of blades between the two men.

Corvo gets a hit in, slashing at Daud’s shoulder. It’s not enough to pierce fully but it staggers Daud, and Corvo is ready to land a finishing blow on him.

Fires halt Corvo in his tracks, and Simin screeches violently as she flies at him. He falters, and Daud doesn’t understand why he hesitates, only angry at Simin for putting herself at risk.

“I said to back off, Simin!” He yells. She only partly listens, weaving around the raticate and trading its missed attacks with reactionary attacks of her own.

Corvo strikes Daud again, and it hurts less than the first time. Corvo looks…

He looks like Billie.

Simin squawks again and launches herself at him again, slash after slash of air and he desperately backs away, Daud’s oricorio encroaching closer and closer.

“Simin, _stop_!”

Simin pretends not to listen to him, and envelops herself in a fire that Corvo could not ignore.

Daud sees it all. The blade at Simin. His legs moving on their own. Simin’s body rolling listlessly across the floor. Her tiny cries, so little, so small.

Red. Red, red, red.

Corvo. He looks like Billie, and Daud is torn yet again on whether to kill and end it all or to give mercy. He can. Corvo is weak. Poisoned, malnourished, weak. Six months in Coldridge has made its mark on him.

But he looks _just_ like Billie.

He remembers how Billie looked like when they both looked upon the dying whale in Rothwild’s slaughterhouse. It’s dying cries of pain, Billie’s grimace and pity. It’s a rare moment of mercy that she gives, even if it is a mercy kill to put it out of misery.

Corvo… he looks like Billie. Is Daud a dying whale, holding on to what little he holds dear anymore?

He looks down, and gratefully, there’s no blood. She’s just fainted, now blissfully unconscious in his hand, but still _so vulnerable_.

He knows what to do.

Daud kneels down and bows his head.

“I know the wrongs, the crimes, the sins I have committed. I’m not about to deny any of them. Do with me as you see fit, but Attano, I have one last surprise…”

He holds Simin close, but allows Corvo to see the beautiful, dancing songbird of Serkonos he must remember. Loyal, loving, small Simin, his strongest pillar in life throughout all these years of power-hungry torment. He’s sinking in the sea of blood he’s spilled, and only Simin’s futile attempts to lift him up keep his head afloat, just a slip away from drowning.

“I beg for her life— Simin’s life. Kill me, but spare her, please.”

He remembers begging like this once ago. Just a teenager, weeping in the sands of Serkonos, pleading for his captors to take him but spare his mother. They didn’t listen.

He won’t expect Corvo to listen either, but he has to _try_ , because the one most innocent presence in his life doesn’t deserve to suffer the punishment reserved for Daud and Daud only.

The following silence is deafening, and Daud comes to the sudden epiphany that as much as he seems to adore solitude, he hates the silence permeating the air now.

Attano… steps away. Further and further away.

“And you choose mercy. Extraordinary.” There’s awe in his voice, even as he knows this moment will torment him for the rest of his life.

* * *

He has nothing except for the clothes on his back, the knife in his hand, a pocketful of spare change, the Mark on his hand, and the oricorio that now sleeps in an inside pocket, her quiet snores not enough to ruffle the heavy cloth. He’s dirt poor and alone, and right now he feels like the worst man alive.

He pays off a vessel that sneaks past the blockade and makes way for Tyvia. He knows he’ll hate the cold, even more than Dunwall’s constant dreary weather, but nothing can feel as cold as the hollow where his heart once laid.

He settles in a faraway village. He chops wood. Carved them at first too, but the faces always look a bit too off, so he casts them away into the hearth and sells firewood to the locals. He fights off wolves and any other number of creatures that dare threaten the borders, and he doesn’t voice his envy for the packs that the wolves travel in.

Only one Whaler finds him. They die of consumption a year later, and he buries them in a humble grave with a whaling mask and their assassin blade that they still carried out of nostalgia. He remembers, as he knelt by them on their deathbed, their quiet gratefulness for the years he lead them, for making them welcome in a home where they are not afraid of the world ever again.

It brings a twinge of guilt, peeling into the thoughts of one he has abandoned, but he shoves the offending emotion deep inside and lets it stew there.

Simin lives on. She heals very nicely from Daud’s duel with Corvo, and the children in the village marvel at such a new and strange pokemon. He teaches them what he knows of pokemon fighting, and despite the fact that his furrowed brows and resting dark expression and deep facial scar scare them away at first, their parents quickly realize that he holds a soft spot for children. They remark at how good he is with them.

They do ask of his past once, over a communal dinner. He’s unused to this attention despite being the leader for the Isle’s most notorious gang for decades. He doesn’t divulge much. Just told of how he picked up street rats and stray folk back in Dunwall (Tyvia doesn’t care for Gristol and it’s happenings, and the village is too remote to know), raised them, cared for them, even if it meant he had to use illegal means. They don’t fault him for it, praising his dedication to those he cares for. He allows warmth to rise in his chest as Simin eats well from sneaking pieces of food that the villagers let her have from their plates; they endear themselves quickly to her, and so accepting Daud into their circle was that much easier.

He doesn’t betray their trust.

They call him Uncle Daud, or maybe even jokingly Uncle Dad.

It's a simple life. It’s not one of penance of course, because he’s simply a coward who ran away from everyone and everything, but _this_ is a simple life.

He lets his Mark go to waste, only using it for the most mundane things. Rarely does an Overseer come this way, and when they do no one even looses a whisper of the outsider in their midst with a cultivar insignia on the back of his left hand. They only speak praise of a helpful newcomer and his charming pokemon, and the Overseer leave him be, unknowing of one of their greatest scourges in their midst.

He cares not for the Void, and he dreams it no more.

He learns to cook. To make his own clothing. He learns the best way to chop a tree down, which trees are ready for harvesting, which trees are the best for firewood and building and carving.

He learns to dance their local Tyvian dances and teaches them the old Serkonan dances that he will always remember, the knowledge latent in his bones, and when Simin finally joins in with joyful chirps and old fiery passion and Daud sheds tears with his tentative smiles…

Well, no one has to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Nothing bad's gonna happen.

**Author's Note:**

> 🅱️lz give me crit for i am but a young wayward writer who has lost their way, punch me in the face with that brutal truth i _crave_ it like how 2014 craved her minerals

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * ["One Last Dance" fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19050295) by [mandalora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandalora/pseuds/mandalora)




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